10 Best Green Home Design Ideas

The Resilient Design Institute offers a list of guiding principles for those attempting to design with resilience as a goal:

1. Resilience transcends scales. Strategies to address resilience apply at scales of individual buildings, communities, and larger regional and ecosystem scales; they also apply at different time scales from immediate to long-term.

3. Diverse and redundant systems are inherently more resilient. More diverse communities, ecosystems, economies, and social systems are better able to respond to interruptions or change, making them inherently more resilient. While sometimes in conflict with efficiency and green building priorities, redundant systems for such needs as electricity, water, and transportation, improve resilience.

4. Simple, passive, and flexible systems are more resilient. Passive or manual-override systems are more resilient than complex solutions that can break down and require ongoing maintenance. Flexible solutions are able to adapt to changing conditions both in the short- and long-te m.

5. Durability strengthens resilience. Strategies that increase durability enhance resilience. Durability involves not only building practices, but also building design (beautiful buildings will be maintained and last longer), infrastructure, and ecosystems.

10 Best Green Home Design Ideas Photo Gallery

6. Locally available, renewable, or reclaimed resources are more resilient. Reliance on abundant local resources, such as solar energy, annually replenished groundwater, and local food provides greater resilience than dependence on nonrenewable resources or resources from far away.

7. Resilience anticipates interruptions and a dynamic future. Adaptation to a changing climate with higher temperatures, more intense storms, sea level rise, flooding, drought, and wildfire is a growing necessity, while non-climate-related natural disasters, such as earthquakes and solar flares, and anthropogenic actions like terrorism and cyberterrorism, also call for resilient design. Responding to change is an opportunity for a wide range of system improvements.

8. Find and promote resilience in nature. Natural systems have evolved to achieve resilience; we can enhance resilience by relying on and applying lessons from nature. Strategies that protect the natural environment enhance resilience for all living systems

9. Social equity and community contribute to resilience. Strong, culturally diverse communities in which people know, respect, and care for each other will fare better during times of stress or disturbance. Social aspects of resilience can be as important as physical responses.

10. Resilience is not absolute. Recognize that incremental steps can be taken and that total resilience in the face of all situations is not possible. Implement what is feasible in the short term and work to achieve greater resilience in stage:.